Behind the Scenes | Lifestyle Shoot | Pat Panakos by Chris Garrison

I recently had the opportunity to shoot Pat Panakos for an article on the future of the projects. Pat is the mastermind behind the Projects wake park. The Projects recently shut it’s doors to the public and is maintained by a few select riders. The wake park was originally a creative playground for many wakeboarders to build and ride features for article, editorial prints, and movies. So things have gone down at the Projects and make it one of the most important spots in wakeboarding history. It was also one of the first places for me to get creative with my style of action photography.

When Pat first called me to do the lifestyle shoot of him, about 5 hours before we started, I was in Tampa doing a media shoot for RedBull. I know Pat has one of the most creative minds in the action sports industry and was also presently building all the park features for RedBull Wake Open at the time. I knew I had to immediately jump on the opportunity to get the shot as I was leaving the next day to Texas for another shoot.

We wanted to show that the Projects was closed and yet still there doing things to push the industry. Pat and I came up with a few ideas and immediately starting shooting. I managed to get Alex Glass to come along and shoot a behind the scenes video of the entire setup and shot. The video also has a little history of the projects and shows a lot of the features from the Red Bull Wake Open being welded and built.